Since January 2012 I have practiced architecture and planning at the Cuningham Group where I play a leading role in a variety of exciting projects in the United States and China.

At the same time as joining Cuningham, I received a research grant from the Aridlands Institute at Woodbury University after a distinguished jury selected my work from a field of more than 250 entries in the Drylands Competition. Over the next two months I worked with a team of water use experts and researchers from the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA to further develop my design concept. On March 23, 2012 I presented my updated design, which envisions a new, sustainable future for Silver Lake and Ivanhoe Reservoirs.

Over the last two years, I have worked within the Silver Lake community to spread awareness about my design research and vision for the future of Silver Lake. I will be presenting this work at a session at Dwell On Design Los Angeles on June 21, 2014 with Craig Collins, President of the Silver Lake Conservancy and Mia Lehrer, who has created pioneering work on the reservoir master plan, jogging paths and meadow.

The following is a synopsis of my work and education following my graduation from Oberlin College in 1997. At Oberlin, I studied art history and studio art, while also spending a semester in Venice with the University of Warwick. The study of art for me was always bound up with the act of making. In addition the buildings that housed these precious works always fascinated me.

I had the good fortune work in some of the great buildings of the twentieth century. At Oberlin, our Art Building was built in two phases -- the original museum was designed by Cass Gilbert and the extension was one of Robert Venturi's first major commsissions. In Venice, our campus was located in the Palazzo Querini Stampaglia, an 18th-Century palazzo modified by Carlo Scarpa.

National Gallery of Art 1997-2000

After graduating from Oberlin College in 1997, I joined the newly formed web site design team at the National Gallery of Art. While at the Gallery, I produced web features on special exhibitions and the museum's architecture. This was a rare opportunity to be surrounded by great art and architecture while working with an emerging form of new media. After 3 years at the National Gallery, I enrolled in University of Pennsylvania's School of Design in Fall 2000.

At Penn I pursued dual master's degrees in Architecture and City Planning. My first year planning studio, a group project based in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, was a recipient of Best Student Project from the American Planning Association.

I made my first visit to China in the spring of 2003. We visited Beijing, Huang Shan, and Shanghai. Our studio was run out of Tsinghua University in Beijing, where we collaborated with students from their architecture and urban planning departments.

I volunteered extensively with the Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia. In 2002 I led a team of architecture students to build an outdoor performance stage for an anual summer festival. In the summer of 2003, I helped prepare a streetscape visioning document that was instrumental in securing $300,000 of Community Reinvestment Act funds from a local bank. My honors thesis imagined a performing arts center for impoverished youth in North Philadelphia on the Village's campus.

Following my graduation I developed a prototype of my thesis project with a grant from the University. I worked for the Department of Architecture as a lecturer in the Summer Preparatory Studio for incoming masters students. As I was preparing to leave the country for employment in China, I spent 3 months with Venturi Scott Brown and Associates, assisting the firm with a campus plan for Tsinghua University and a student center at Brown University.

Arriving in Beijing in late 2004, the city -- and the country as a whole -- was in the throes of a major development explosion. In the year that I spent in China, I worked on a vast array of project types in a variety of regions of the country. I gained experience with a vast array of building types, including residential, hotel, office, and large scale urban planning.

Professional Work 2006-2012

From March 2006 until early in 2012, I worked as a project architect at RTKL Associates, Inc in their Los Angeles Office. My work has spanned a diverse range of project types and markets in Asia and the United States. I have worked closely with owners and development groups to deliver high quality design services.

RTKL's mixed use studio has provided a fantastic place to combine archtitecture and planning. The scale of the projects necessitate a commitment to urban design. The breadth and scope of the work have taught me many different lessons about the practice of architecture and city planning.

I have been a steadfast advocate for greening the practice of design at RTKL. I was one of the first members of the Los Angeles office to gain LEED Accreditation, and upon passing the exam, worked to prepare my colleagues and firm partners to also complete the exam. In 2007 I was joint recepient of two awards, one for firmwide collaboration and sustainability in recognition of these efforts.

In 2010, I passed the AICP accreditation exam and received my license to practice architecture in 2009.